The newest inductees into the Air Show Hall of Fame include familiar aerobatics performers who have been thrilling show crowds in familiar airplanes for many, many decades.
Gene Soucy, Chuck Newcomb and the AeroShell Aerobatic Team will be formally recognized at the International Council of Air Shows Chairman’s Banquet on December 11 at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas.
Soucy has been a member of the famed Red Devils, the Eagles Aerobatic teams and his own wing-walking team and has earned recognition as a solo performer for nearly five decades. He is a former National Advanced Aerobatic Champion and a member of the first U.S. team to win the World Aerobatic Championship.
Newcomb has been working the air show circuit for nearly as long as Soucy. A former U.S. Navy Blue Angels demonstration team pilot in the early 1970s, Newcomb began his career as an air show event organizer in 1975. Since then, he has organized more than 150 different air shows and aviation events around the world. He helped create the historic Soviet MiG tour of North America in 1991 and has been a key figure behind the scenes at the Cleveland National Air Show for four decades.
The AeroShell Aerobatic Team, formed in 1985, is the oldest civilian air show team in North America. Flying its instantly recognizable white, red and black North American AT-6 Texans, the team is a fixture at air shows and aviation events across the country. Team pilots have included Steve Gustafson, Alan Henley, Ben Cunningham, Gene McNeely, Mark Henley, Bryan Regan, Jimmy Fordham, and Morris Ray.
Watch the AeroShell Aerobatic Team perform in the video below.
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